Young Indian helps the hungry

Almost 20 crore Indians go to sleep every night with an empty stomach. On the other hand, food worth Rs 58,000 crore is wasted every year in India. Ankit Kwatra was appalled by at this anomaly and founded a non-government organization - Feeding India - to solve the problem of hunger. Ankit is 24 years old young man who was recently selected by United Nations for the inaugural cohort of UN Young Leaders for Sustainable Development Goals. 17 youth leaders have been selected from all across the globe for their leadership, recognizing their contribution to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.

In 2014, Ankit went to a lavish Indian wedding function, where he found that the leftover food was simply thrown in the dustbins. “It could have easily fed 5000 hungry people that night”, Ankit reminisces. On further probing, he found that this was a practice followed after every function, wedding or event. He swung into action and along with his friends started collecting the excess food from the parties and passing it to the needy people. That is how Feeding India was born.

Ankit’s organization runs regular feeding programmes in over 28 cities in India. It has also tied up with various NGOs and shelter homes like Rain Basera, to create efficient channels of distributing food. A 24X7 helpline is in place to track the information about the excess food. As India struggles to feed its own population, there are people like Ankit, whose simple and innovative solutions are fighting the menace of hunger.